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> Casual web visitors to the public-facing portion aren't exposed to the majority of the product, and have a sub-par experience as a result. No, their experien

> Casual web visitors to the public-facing portion aren't exposed to the majority of the product, and have a sub-par experience as a result. No, their experiences are perfectly fine. Maybe the company believes that monetization is worse when account-free users read the site, but being account-free is an ideal experience for the majority of users. Companies love to lie about this, both externally and internally.

evanelias 5y ago
I'm talking strictly from the standpoint of a user of web-based social products. For any product with a substantial communication and/or community aspect, you inherently can't use most of the product's functionality if you don't have an account. And if the product doesn't do a good job of explaining its purpose, you won't even fully understand what functionality you're missing out on. Going back to my Tumblr example, I've had a lot of conversations with people on HN who fundamentally didn't grok that there's substantially more to the product than the public-facing blog network, in part because there isn't a login wall. A few examples: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28607197 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28607197 (interesting quote further downthread "I never felt the need to make an account since I was just reading. They didn't make it clear that the service was incomplete without an account.") https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29700519 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29700519 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29958173 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29958173
- ciupicri 5y ago
  So instead of Tumblr providing a better user interface that includes timestamps or lets you filter "reactions" or commments, casual reards should sign up to Tumblr.
  - evanelias 5y ago
    Your comments prove my point exactly. The public-facing blog network (which has no login wall and does not require an account) uses a templated theme system. The blog author can make it look however they want! Some blogs choose themes which omit these things, or use a custom theme and choose to omit these things. That makes the user interface worse! Meanwhile the Tumblr dashboard (logged in user experience / social network side) has a uniform user interface which does provide these things. But there is no way for Tumblr to prevent this problem on the blog side while still allowing users to have full control over their blog's public appearance. If they forced themes to contain specific template tags or design elements, it would no longer be usable as a freeform CMS. Same reason Tumblr doesn't/can't have a login wall. But as a result of this, casual readers get a mistaken impression of the product and its capabilities.

evanelias 5y ago

I'm talking strictly from the standpoint of a user of web-based social products. For any product with a substantial communication and/or community aspect, you inherently can't use most of the product's functionality if you don't have an account. And if the product doesn't do a good job of explaining its purpose, you won't even fully understand what functionality you're missing out on. Going back to my Tumblr example, I've had a lot of conversations with people on HN who fundamentally didn't grok that there's substantially more to the product than the public-facing blog network, in part because there isn't a login wall. A few examples: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28607197 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28607197 (interesting quote further downthread "I never felt the need to make an account since I was just reading. They didn't make it clear that the service was incomplete without an account.") https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29700519 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29700519 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29958173 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29958173

ciupicri 5y ago
So instead of Tumblr providing a better user interface that includes timestamps or lets you filter "reactions" or commments, casual reards should sign up to Tumblr.
- evanelias 5y ago
  Your comments prove my point exactly. The public-facing blog network (which has no login wall and does not require an account) uses a templated theme system. The blog author can make it look however they want! Some blogs choose themes which omit these things, or use a custom theme and choose to omit these things. That makes the user interface worse! Meanwhile the Tumblr dashboard (logged in user experience / social network side) has a uniform user interface which does provide these things. But there is no way for Tumblr to prevent this problem on the blog side while still allowing users to have full control over their blog's public appearance. If they forced themes to contain specific template tags or design elements, it would no longer be usable as a freeform CMS. Same reason Tumblr doesn't/can't have a login wall. But as a result of this, casual readers get a mistaken impression of the product and its capabilities.